The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. Albert Camus

The Media Ignores the CIA in Ukraine

A few days back the Economist published an essay which dismissed the idea of fascists in Kiev as an illusory product of Russian propaganda[1]. This is a narrative which the editors at the Economist have put forth on a number of occasions[2]. Of course they’re not alone. A less flagrant article published by the New York Times editorial board used a weird double negative to assert that “Russian leaders prefer not to accept that the C.I.A. did not engineer the preference of many Ukrainians for what they see in the West[3].”

All the world’s a stage wrote Shakespeare. Are readers supposed to categorically assume that U.S. intelligence has played absolutely no role in the coup d’état? So far the bulk of the American media’s coverage of the Ukraine deftly sidesteps the CIA’s role.

Yet all of the signs are there. Former CIA Officer John Stockwell explained that “stirring up deadly ethnic and racial strife has been a standard technique used by the CIA.[4]” Students of history (e.g. Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Chile, and Nicaragua) will also recognize many of the hallmarks of a covert destabilization operation.

Witness senator John McCain sharing a stage with Oleh Tyahnybok in the early days of the coup[5], CIA director Brennan’s discreet visit to the Ukraine (buried near the end of a Reuters brief)[6], the taped phone call where Victoria Nuland essentially selects who would replace the deposed president[7], or the disproportionate number of high-level officials in the new government linked to neo-fascist groups.

This last point is particularly telling and worth highlighting because the CIA has a well-documented history of supporting authoritarian regimes. If the far-right represents only a small contingent of the Ukrainian electorate, as we’ve been told by allegedly credible sources like Timothy Snyder[8], how exactly did they end up with so many powerful government slots?

“The new deputy prime minister, Oleksandr Sych, is from Svoboda; National Security Secretary Andriy Parubiy is a co-founder of the neo-Nazi Social-National Party, Svoboda’s earlier incarnation; the deputy secretary for National Security is Dmytro Yarosh, the head of Right Sector. Chief prosecutor Oleh Makhnitsky is another Svoboda member, as are the ministers for Agriculture and Ecology”

As far as current CIA operational details are concerned the corporate media has enforced line discipline across the board. This shouldn’t come as any surprise as the media’s penetration by the intelligence community has been public knowledge since the days of the Church Committee Report. In fact, in May of this year the White House (in a screw-up of epic proportions) accidentally leaked the name of the CIA station chief in Afghanistan to roughly 6,000 reporters[10].

The White House asked reporters to dutifully “zip it” and that’s exactly what they did. The one reporter who dared to cross the line and mention the station chief’s name and in print, Ted Rall, was summarily fired before he got the chance[11]. Never mind that this sort of information is all over[12] the Internet[13].

There’s very little doubt that Russia is lending support to rebel forces in the West. At the same time the tendency of news outlets like the Economist, owned in part by wealthy financial interests[14], to faithfully shun introspection with regard to the ongoing Ukrainian conflict reflects the elite mindset of exceptionalism.

To understand the forces at work, consider a passage from Chapter 7 (page 324) of Tragedy and Hope, an unusual book written by Georgetown professor named Carroll Quigley back in the 1960s:

“The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences”

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, western elites largely did away with a countervailing ideological alternative and were one step closer to realizing their goal of corporate state capture. The pieces on Brzezinski’s grand chessboard were rearranged. The interests behind the imperial brain trust, the team that conducted the CFR’s War and Peace Studies, saw their opening. Karl Rove aptly crystallized the prevailing mindset[15]:

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do”

The empire has its sights on expansion. Despite promises made to Gorbachev decades ago by then Secretary of State James Baker that NATO wouldn’t expand into former Soviet countries, that’s exactly what’s been underway[16]. Putin can see this happening and if he’s meddling in the Ukraine it’s only because he’s following the CIA’s lead.